Georgie Anne Geyer’s confusing article on Britain’s plight

In a column about Britain’s and Europe’s Muslim problem Georgie Anne Geyer makes some good points, but also badly confuses the issue.

1. In her initial analysis, she blames the presence of radical and anti-British Muslims in Britain on leftist multiculturalists, ignoring the fact that Conservative governments also allowed this disaster to happen and that the Tory party has been completely on board with the whole PC, “anti-racist,” ultra-tolerance regime. As I’ve argued in many articles, it does no good to act as if multiculturalism is only the work of the left. The ideas that led to multiculturalism—most importantly, the belief in systematic non-discrimination toward people of every background and culture—are mainstream ideas and attitudes of the modern liberal West including mainstream conservativism, not “leftist” ideas, and if only leftism is blamed, the mainstream beliefs that brought this about will not be challenged and the problem cannot be solved.

2. Geyer then approvingly quotes the Islamic scholar Karen Armstrong (who happens to be a total apologist for Islam—does Geyer not know this?) to the effect that today’s crisis is really just a matter of colonial chickens coming home to roost:

I just spoke by phone with Karen Armstrong, the brilliant Islamic scholar and author of “Islam: A Short History.” From London, she stressed that “all of this should have been expected, but our security people of the ’90s were thinking only of the Irish problem. What we are seeing now is the ongoing story of colonialism. These young men are only coming here because of the regimes that we left behind. Colonialism didn’t finish when we came home, you see. They are now continuing it here—it is really a new kind of nationalism.”

Apart from the silly flattery of calling a pro-Islamic, anti-Western mediocrity like Armstrong “brilliant” (a word so overused today it has become a meaningless honorific, like speaking of a “distinguished Senator”), Geyer’s adoption of Armstrong’s leftist ideas is disturbing. After initially blaming Britain’s dhimmi disaster solely on leftist multiculturalism, she turns around and implicitly buys into the demoralizing leftist argument that British colonialism was a great sin (the English equivalent of slavery and racial segregation), for which Britain deserves to be punished. First she indicts the left for Britain’s multicultural plight, then she herself adopts the leftist indictment of British colonialism, an indictment that made the British feel guilty over their own history and led them into the disastrous accommodation to Third-World immigrants that has produced the current disaster that Geyer decries.

The same leftist view of where the ultimate responsibility lies is reflected in the article’s title:

WESTERN TERRORISTS HAVE ROOTS IN EARLIER COLONIALISM

Of course, Geyer probably didn’t choose the headline; her editors did. But if she hadn’t presented the “roots in colonialism” case in her article, the editors wouldn’t have been able to put that idea in the headline.

The upshot is that two of the principal attitudes that opened Britain’s doors to Muslim immigrants—the mainstream belief in non-discrimination, and guilt over Britain’s colonial past—are either ignored by Geyer or actively promoted by her.

3. All is not lost, however. The strongest part of the article comes at the end.

European countries are now clamoring for immigrants to be assimilated. It’s too late, and it’s their own fault. They were blasé about the realities of human nature and the profundities of human culture when they let so many from clearly antithetical societies enter on their own terms. The Europeans never even asked anything of the immigrants: not personal respect, not reverence for the new country, not promises to fulfill the duties of citizenship.

And on top of that, they brought all the worst fundamentalist leaders of the Middle East right into their capital cities, where they could live freely and propagate their archaic beliefs, further inspiring the isolated and angry immigrant youth.

Europe can still do something about all of this, and attempts to deal more deftly with moderate Muslims in London represent one step. But really, until the Europeans understand what they did in those years—and why they did it—this sad story will only repeat itself.

Geyer is of course correct that it’s way too late to speak of “assimilation,” and it’s heartening to hear such realism. However, her closing point is unclear. If assimilation is not possible, and yet “Europe can still do something about all of this,” what exactly is she proposing? Is she hinting at the removal of Muslims? That would be the logical conclusion of her argument. Unfortunately, immediately after saying that Europe can do something, she praises Europe’s “more deft handling of moderate Muslims,” which suggests not a new hard line toward Muslims but the usual appeasement. If the latter is what she is really pushing, the article would appear to be even more confused than I thought.

Geyer’s closing point is that unless Europeans understand their own mistakes, they have no hope of undoing them. I agree. Unfortunately, Geyer herself does not seem to have an unambiguous sense of what those mistakes were.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 22, 2005 06:44 AM | Send